My Beautiful Failure by Janet Ruth Young Page A

too.
    “That sounds rough.”
    I’m on painkillers.
    “Do they help?”
    Pretty well. You know, I talked to you before.
    “Really?”
    Yeah. I recognize your voice.
    “Maybe. I’m not sure.”
    No, I’m sure I do. We talked last week. I’m Matt. It’s Billy, right?
    “Yes.”
    We just talked, like, a few days ago.
    “We get a lot of calls here. So, tell me more about your dental pain. How long have you had it?”
    I told you that last time. Don’t you remember?
    “No, I’m sorry.”
    Do you have early Alzheimer’s or something?
    “Are you feeling suicidal?”
    No. Ha! You asked me that last time.
    “So how are you coping, with the pain and all?”
    Matt needed oral surgery, but it was expensive and his dad’s insurance policy wouldn’t pay for it. So he kept taking higher doses of painkillers, which made him logy, and he had fallen asleep at the wheel today. Rather than offer advice, I encouraged him to tell me his options and decide for himself which sounded best. I added heaps of reflective listening about the pain. I was good at this. I was very good.

48.
on hold
    I pressed hold.
    I slid the manual to the table’s edge and let it fall on the floor.
    One of the college kids came in from the front room to raid the snack cabinet. He found a bag of trail mix and did an end-zone dance with the bag on his way out.
    I wish I would get a Likely, I told Richie. The words sounded morbid coming out of my mouth, but they were true. If all I did was listen and never take action, I was no better than a Listerine.
    Richie pointed his thumb at the front room. Those guys got the Likelies, he told me. Mostly on the weekends, during overnights. The overnights were grueling, he said. Around two in the morning the Listeners in that room would do anything to stay awake. Last Saturday they had ended up having races in the chairs.
    That sounded fun, I said. I realized I sounded both pathetic and young, but Richie was probably thinking thesame thing. I yearned to roll my office chair across the room, from end to end of the phone bank, spinning in circles and making a thundering noise.
    Someday that would be us, Richie said.

49.
life saver
    R ichie checked the cabinet to see if the large foraging primate had left us anything. Margaret looked a little zoned out. Richie asked why she was so quiet.
    A Likely, she said.
    While Richie and I were talking. Goddamn it! It was fate, the spin of the roulette wheel. Because she was line 1 and I was line 3, she had gotten a Likely while I’d gotten a guy with bad teeth. How long would it be now, how many weeks or months, before another Likely called?
    Richie asked if the caller was one of our regulars.
    It was a brand-new Incoming, Margaret told us. An elderly man named Hagrid.
    What was the suicide plan? I asked.
    Hagrid had been about to jump off a building. He had been standing right on the ledge, talking to her on his cell phone. She could hear the wind and the cars. He was four stories up and described the people on the ground shouting. The whole scene.
    Hagrid was certainly an unusual name, I said.
    Richie’s lips moved during Margaret’s recap. He repeated almost every word Margaret said, as if it was his own call. The scene seemed real to him, even though he had only heard it from Margaret, who heard it from the Incoming.
    Margaret said she felt like she had just done the special job she was put on earth to do. She felt almost a little high.
    The call would have been pretty convincing except for the stupid name. Too bad for Margaret. She didn’t get my Likely after all. But I didn’t want to burst Margaret’s bubble. She looked illuminated, like she’d just stepped out of church.
    I asked her what else happened in the call, and Margaret said she had talked him off the ledge. Richie repeated her words again, passing a bag of trail mix.
    Right at the end, Hagrid had a change of heart. When he said he was intent on killing himself, she asked him if he could wait until tomorrow.